Amazon increasing foothold in Southern California with new warehouse

Aug. 14, 2014

Updated Aug. 18, 2014 11:41 a.m.

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Sorted packages sit on shelves at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in San Bernardino. The company has announced that it's opening a new warehouse in Redlands that will employ 2,500 when completed. FILE: PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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The Amazon Fulfillment Center in San Bernardino opened in October 2012 and brought in 1,400 new jobs. FILE: PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Sorted packages sit on shelves at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in San Bernardino. The company has announced that it's opening a new warehouse in Redlands that will employ 2,500 when completed. FILE: PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Seattle-based company has plans for its fifth warehouse in the state, which will allow the online retailer to further strengthen its regional presence while satisfying customers’ growing appetite for speedy shipments of goods.

The new 700,000-square-foot fulfillment space will be built in Redlands, in southwestern San Bernardino County.

The new center is expected to fulfill orders of large items, from TVs to outdoor furniture, that will be picked, packed and shipped to customers, company spokeswoman Ashley Robinson said Thursday.

The new operation will be located north of the I-10 freeway and west of the I-210 interchange. Together Amazon’s California fulfillment centers will represent 5 million square feet of space.

“Amazon is continuing to position itself to remain a leader in retail,” said Marshal Cohen, a retail analyst with New York-based NPD Group. “It’s critical for them to keep putting their formula on the table, get products to customers as quickly as possible by adding more local distribution (centers).”

Earlier this year, Amazon began to offer same-day shipping of items to select areas, including Los Angeles and Orange counties. The promise: Order by noon and packages will arrive by 9 p.m. the same day.

Amazon has been feverishly planning and building new sites throughout the state, prompted by a deal struck with state officials.

Signed in 2011, a state law required large online retailers such as Amazon to start collecting sales tax from residents. State officials granted Amazon a one-year reprieve from the requirement as long as it agreed to build distribution centers in California and hire a certain number of workers by 2015.

Since then, Amazon has built warehouses in San Bernardino, Patterson, Tracy and Moreno Valley.

Job postings for the upcoming location are already appearing online. Want ads for a human resources manager, operations manager and fulfillment staff have been posted on various career sites since late July.

The state has collected nearly $350 million from the online sales-tax measure, based on the most recent public figures, last updated in late 2013. It’s unclear how much the state has collected from Amazon alone, but it is the largest online company in the U.S., according to trade publication Internet Retailer.

The state isn’t the only one benefiting from this deal.

Amazon received a nearly $1.6 million tax credit from the state for establishing the Moreno Valley center along with other agreements, according to the state.

The credit is good as long as the company sticks to the contract terms, which includes maintaining a statewide workforce of 1,726 full-time workers annually for the next three years.

As part of the Redlands announcement, Amazon said it will hire 2,500 full-time workers there and elsewhere in California.

In the past, the e-retailer has been criticized for its workers’ conditions, including low pay and heat-related injuries.

Cohen, of the NPD Group, says a company like Amazon, which is well-aware of the criticisms, should know better with each new opening.

“There are plenty of people watching, poking holes in that process,” he said. “They recognize they have to make it better; in California, everybody calls you out.”

Correction: Due to an editing error, the story incorrectly stated where the 2,500 expected hires will be based. They will work at the future Redlands center as well as other Amazon warehouses throughout the state.

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